Watching the anti-finance bill-turned-anti-government protests unfold in Kenya, I could not help but wonder what I could offer from my own experiences of analysing and contributing, however modestly, to the chapters of revolution that have unfolded in Ethiopia from 2014 to date. Drawn to the striking similarities and important differences between the Gen Z movement and the Qeerroo/Qarree movement (also known as the Oromo Protest Movement, as I will refer to it going forward) that engaged in direct action for four years before eventually toppling a 27-year dictatorship, I offer these reflections to you, friends and comrades of Kenya, in the spirit of interconnected liberation.
In 2014, Ethiopia’s governing coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Federation (EPRDF) announced the introduction of the Addis Ababa Master Plan (AAMP). The urban development plan intended to expand the territory of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital (known to the Oromo as Finfinnee) by 1.1 million hectares, absorbing smaller towns and districts into the geographical and socio-political landscape. The adverse impacts of this plan were, broadly speaking, two-fold.
Firstly, rural populations made up much of the outskirts of the capital, and for the AAMP to take place, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of farmers, both subsistence and medium – to small-scale commercial farmers, would be displaced and their land effectively grabbed by the state and its development partners. Although small amounts of compensation were offered to farmers for their land, they did not come anywhere close to the cost of the loss, and nor could they be considered to be proportionate compensation when measured against the projected profits the master plan promised its designers and implementers.
Secondly, the plan was considered to be implementing a cultural erasure reminiscent of the historic erasure the Oromo and other national groups that are part of the Ethiopian Federation claim took place to create the Ethiopian state that we know today. Addis Ababa is one of two “special zones” in Ethiopia, meaning that it is governed by the federal government but considered part of the Oromia regional state. This legality is an attempt to address the colonial legacy of the capital, because although it stands as the capital established by Menelik II after initially being set up as a military base for members of Menelik’s army from further north, Addis Ababa is traditionally recognised as being the territory of the Tuulama Oromo and the site of political, cultural, and spiritual convergence of the broader Oromo nation. With Addis Ababa often feeling alienated from a sense of Oromoness, the AAMP was seen as an attempt to erase the distinct Oromo socio-political culture that defines Oromia beyond the capital.
Resistance to the master plan began in April 2014 in the small town of Ginchi. Over four years, the Oromo Protest Movement became a regionwide and eventually countrywide movement that, in 2018, ended a three-decade-long political dictatorship enforced by the ruling coalition’s dominant party, the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and its political allies across Oromia and the rest of Ethiopia.
Similarities and differences
Both the Oromo Protest Movement in Oromia and the Gen Z movement in Kenya share defining factors. Young people, using a decentralised organising approach while leveraging the reach of influential political figures and activists to amplify their message, were at the heart of both these movements. The Oromo Protest movement takes the name Qeerroo/Qarree from the terminology used to describe the age group of young unmarried men and women in the Oromo system of indigenous democracy, the Gaddaa system. This is another way of referring to the youth demographic in society and references the same population group the term Gen Z refers to.
Both movements respond to a class dilemma and mobilise nationalism to articulate their demands and give language to their movements. In the case of the Oromo protests, the movement adopted a nationalist rhetoric, highlighting the ways in which both the AAMP and the overall leadership of the TPLF-led EPRDF were in breach of the constitution, which recognised the rights of the nation within the nation as the central pillar of the modern Ethiopian state. Still, the sticking question of class disparity that the master plan highlighted is what eventually saw the movement take shape in other regional states across the country.
The Gen Z movement has seen Kenyans of diverse ethnic, religious, and political orientations join in, mobilising the people around a shared national reality, using language that attaches the idea of “sovereignty” to the people, and positions the state’s character and behaviour as breaching this sovereignty, making it the “un-Kenyan” party in an established people-state dynamic. The reclamation of the symbol of the flag that has been visible across the movement – used to drape dead bodies and gifted to families of killed protesters – as well as the storming of the parliament building, are all ways in which the people have reclaimed the nationalist sentiments that the state deployed in introducing the Finance Bill 2024.
Both protest movements were ignited by the introduction of a controversial policy by a sitting government and quickly turned their focus to ending the reign of the same sitting government. In the case of the Gen Z protests, they were sparked by a rejection of a finance bill proposed by Ruto’s government that planned to increase taxes on everyday products like sanitary pads and bread to pay off Kenya’s foreign debt. The bill – drafted in part or perhaps more comprehensively by the International Monetary Fund – was introduced in the context of a population reeling from overtaxation and Ruto’s designation by the US as a major non-NATO ally. This played a role in shifting the public’s attention from the singular policy issue to the role that imperialism and economic corruption among the political class play in contributing to class inequity in the country.
Despite the president announcing that he would not assent to the bill, a move widely reported across national and international media, the information did nothing to quell Kenyans’ frustrations. Kenya’s president also fired his entire cabinet in light of the protests, saying that the move came from a place of sincere reflection about his role as a national leader in the face of such serious discontent. However, the state’s continued display of brute force against protesters – more than 200 people were reported killed during the weeks of protest – has meant that the calls for Ruto to step down have not died down.
In the case of the Oromo protests, the Oromia regional state introduced the AAMP in 2014, retracted it in 2015 due to it being an election year, but slowly and discreetly continued to pursue its implementation. A football stadium was to be demolished in 2015 to make way for the AAMP’s development in Ginchi, the same place where the initial protests had begun the previous year. This re-emergence of the AAMP revived a resistance movement that would continue for three years and this time, following the state’s militarised response to the protests, the movement’s calls were no longer about simply abandoning the master plan, but were focused on removing the one-party dominated coalition that had ruled the country for over two decades.
In both cases, the state responded to the dissent with intense militarisation. In both cases, protestors were killed, arbitrarily arrested, and disappeared. In both cases, Internet shutdowns were used to silence people. In both cases, the state’s violent response became the rallying point to call for a complete overhaul of a sitting government.
In the case of the Oromo protests, thousands were killed over the four-year period, with some human rights activists citing numbers as high as five thousand people. Tens of thousands were imprisoned, and the Internet was shut down in rural towns for months at a time – the same strategy that was used to stop information going in and out of Tigray during the two-year genocide that took place from 2020 to 2022.
The frightening footage of the military shooting people at close range, the killing sprees that took place in Nairobi’s poorer areas, the disappearances of people for months at a time, many abducted from their homes and others while in public spaces, are all events that, just like in the Oromo protests, further galvanised communities in their resistance efforts, rather than deterring dissent, as the state intends this violence to achieve.
Sharing lessons
A recently elected leader is unlikely to step down at all, no matter the level of violence that has to be deployed to remain in power. Just as the Oromo protests were demanding in Ethiopia following the 2015 elections, Kenya is asking a leader who hasn’t even served half of his term to step down. Even while the means to achieve this outcome using constitutional mechanisms are explored, history from around the globe – and more so from Oromo Protests Movement neighbouring Ethiopia – shows us that direct action can achieve the goal of removing a government.
As states continue to insist on violent responses to dissent, the people should continue to find creative ways to engage in direct action that disrupts the status quo until their demands are met. In the case of the Oromo protests, communication strategies were developed at the grassroots level to organise market boycotts and protests. These communication systems would go undetected by the state even though Ethiopia’s internal intelligence and surveillance systems were almost inescapable. Organisers allowed time to lapse between protests, a strategy that, coupled with discreet communication systems and roadblocks erected overnight, meant that the people used time to their advantage, with the military unable to prepare to meet the people at the planned protest points.
Although not having a full plan for what comes after the end of a sitting government isn’t a reason to not take direct action to uproot a violent government, it is also important to keep the development of future structures in clear sight, as the hijack of a power vacuum by can often lead to unchanged systemic issues within state power, only bringing in new faces. In other cases, premature state collapse – different from strategic state dissolution – can occur, triggering an array of humanitarian and social justice crises.
In parallel with the grassroots work of organisers across Oromia, changes were taking place among the ruling political class in the Oromia regional state. Part of this process included choosing a new leader to take the helm of the transitional government that was formed following the resignation of the prime minister on 15 February 2018. This filling of the power vacuum by the political elite and the mistake committed of placing complete trust in the regeneration of the state in the image of this singular leader meant that the movement that had paid for its freedom from tyranny with blood set itself up to meet a violence unmatched by the previous government.
In some ways, the work of protest is easier than the work of organising for power to remain in the hands of the people on a day-to-day basis. But it has been my hope during my years in Kenya that, with the many organisers and groups that have made it their life’s work to realise a just and equitable society, the country may be the first in our region to successfully create a system of political life that is built for the people, by the people, and that goes far beyond what the state has the political will to achieve.
Nationalism as a mobilising force has its limitations and recognising this early will allow a movement to develop foresight in the organising journey. Across the four-year trajectory of the Oromo protests, the heartbeat of this struggle in Oromia was Oromo nationalism. Today, that same sentiment has been hijacked by the state and assimilated into its aesthetic, for lack of a better term, claiming that political struggle in Oromia has no further logic and weaponising the reality of an exponentially larger and more powerful Oromo elite and ruling political class against the rest of the country, thereby exacerbating conflict and hatred. Moreover, the broad-based application of Oromo nationalism has also caused erasure within Oromia, where people groups with different needs and who face different political and cultural dynamics from territory to territory are now resisting the very unity that swept the region before 2018.
I believe Kenya could face similar dynamics. Although accusations of political and economic corruption have not targeted any particular group or region, and there has been relatively broad participation in the protests, as the movement considers the social contracts it would like to see different societies in Kenya develop in the distant or near future, it is important to take into account instances where Kenyan nationalism has been used against specific people in Kenya, thereby causing a sense of isolation and un-belonging.
A context in which the limitations of nationalism could be recognised is, for example, the relationship between the northern territories – predominately dominated by Cushite-speaking groups – and the broader Kenya, a dynamic that has been strained since the 1963–1967 war between the newly formed state and these territories. Another example could be the similar dynamics evident between unitary Kenyan nationalism and the coastal regions, or indigenous groups across the country who often face human rights violations that go unheard and unseen by urban communities across the Kenyan territory.
The working-class population, although threatened with a similar fate from the Finance Bill 2024, also faces different realities historically and on a day-to-day basis. Recognising this early, as opposed to erasing these differences to simplify the work of mobilising a sense of unity, can help a movement grow to encompass the diversity that can and should be its strength. I elaborate on these ideas in a long-form paper on people-centred Pan-Africanism, a string of ideas also born of analysis in the Ethiopian political sphere, but applicable to the questions and contentions raised above.
Revolution is a process, one that the Kenyan people did not start in June this year but have been experiencing in waves ever since the struggle against colonialism materialised in the form of the Mau Mau struggle from 1950 until Kenya’s independence in 1963. Just like many post-colonial societies that are, in fact, not post-colonial at all but are living under the grip of colonising structures and ideologies, Kenya is experiencing the same suffering. Galvanised by the Gen Z movement, the people that make up this country could not only realise its leading demand, the end to the Ruto government, but this chapter of revolution could also see the structures of systemic and cyclical violence uprooted entirely.
In the words of Kurdish political leader Abdullah Ocallan, “There is no law that states that a natural society must necessarily develop into a hierarchical and subsequently a statist society. There may be a propensity towards such a development, but equating such a propensity with an inevitable, incessant process that has to run its full course, would be a totally erroneous assumption.” Liberating Life: Women’s Revolution.